The Very, Very, Very Brave Lion

My daughter has a moose; my best friend, a monkey. In fact, every woman I know (except my mother, who has a mug and a chamber pot) has an old, dirty, one-eyed, ratty-looking, partially unstuffed, lopsided toy from her infancy popped up on some prominent shelf and spoken of in grandiose terms, as if it had once cured mumps, ennui, and heartache.

Mine was Larry Lion. While my mother was waiting to be knocked unconscious for my delivery, Dad was at the Sinai Hospital gift shop buying the age-inappropriate pull-string Yacker. Larry said about 12 different things: “I’m ferocious, aren’t I?” and “(growl) OOOH! I scared myself!” were my favorites. When it spoke (in Mel Blanc’s voice), the whole mouth moved. And that was one kissable plastic mouth.

Larry Lion was mine, all mine, for about a decade. And during that time, I was never once embarrassed by my lunch bag, which had my name, Leslie, under a drawing of Larry. But by the time I was eleven, I was pulling his string less and less and finding him in my sister’s room more and more. And that was fine by me, until I turned 16, and stuffed animals achieved monumental hipness once again.

This was a problem. In Beth’s mind, the ownership of Larry fell under some sort of squatter’s law. She’d had him for seven years, after all. Even though his whiskers were missing, one eye had fallen off, his record sometimes skipped, and his body was lopsided, he was undeniably mine; I wanted him back. And then he disappeared. I was sure my sister had stolen him, had cloistered him behind a secret panel. I knew that I would sneak in one day and hear him telling her privately, “I’m a very, very, very brave lion.”

I didn’t look for him again until my daughter was born, almost twenty years later. When my husband showed up with a moose in a rattan chair for our new baby, it reminded me how much I wanted Larry back. I enlisted my mother’s help locating him, and I set out to find a suitable replacement to present to my sister on her birthday, which was a month away. At Ebay, the on-line auction house, the desperately nostalgic can buy back just about any childhood memory, including Mattel’s first Yacker. Sure enough, I found dozens of Larries in various states of disrepair--all selling for more than $80. Undaunted, I bid. Nothing was too good for my sister, especially if my Larry were coming home to rest on my prominent shelf.

Ninety-five dollars and one week later, a box arrived with someone else’s childhood toy in it. He smelled like my Larry. He sounded like my Larry. But this toy was clean and beautiful and intact. I pulled his string and sobbed a little. Two days later, Mom recovered the original version, which was stuffed in Beth’s old closet behind some old 45 RPM records. He was still the whiskerless, one-eyed, dirty, smooshed toy he was before he disappeared 18 years ago.

And that’s the one I wrapped up for my sister.